It's fairly involved, but worth it. I can't find any good recipe in English, so I'm writing this up. This is for a traditional Bavarian meatloaf ("Leberkäse", which literally means "liver cheese", but contains neither liver nor cheese. Go figure…)

You will need a meat grinder, plus a food processor that can take some abuse. (The kind with two or three large curved blades.) It needs to be strong enough to turn a kilogram of meat into a thick and very fine paste.

Meat:

300 g pork shoulder

200 g lean beef

200 g pork belly without rind

100 g pork back fat

Cube the meat into pieces small enough to fit into the grinder. Put the meat into the freezer until it is just starting to freeze. Grind using a fine disk and put back in the fridge, or back into the freezer. We want to keep things as close to freezing point as possible during the entire process (but without actually freezing the meat).

Spices:

2 g pink curing salt #1

18 g salt

2.5 g ground white pepper

0.25 g ground cardamom

0.5 g ground coriander seed

0.25 g ginger powder

0.75 g ground mace

5 g finely grated fresh onion

4 g baking powder or 2 g phosphate

The baking powder is used to make sure that things bind correctly ("Kutterhilfsmittel"). It needs to contain phosphate. (Check on the package.) Alternatively, get some phosphate from a site that sells sausage making supplies and use only 2 g.

"Kuttern" (blending):

200 g finely shaved ice (consistency almost like snow)

I use the food processor to make the shaved ice.

Once you start to blend the meat, you need to move reasonably quickly to avoid things getting too warm. (The friction from the blending generates heat.) Have a fast-reading thermometer at hand and check the temperature occasionally. It must not exceed 12 ºC at any time (ideally, it should never go above 8 ºC or so). If things get too warm, stick the mixture back into the freezer for a few minutes.

Put the meat into the food processor and blend for a minute or so until you have something that's very finely ground. Then add about half the ice and the spices and blend at high speed. The meat will emulsify and start to form a very fine and thick paste that is very sticky and uniform in texture. While blending, gradually add the remainder of the ice. (Remember to check the temperature occasionally.)

Once you have something that's really gooey (like very thick and very sticky mud that stretches like a yeast dough), put the mixture into a greased rectangular baking dish or greased disposable aluminium container. The dish should hold a little over a litre. Avoid getting air bubbles into the mix. (Butchers take a big handful of the stuff and literally slam it into the dish to avoid trapping air.) Smooth the top with wet hands and decorate by making a diamond pattern with the back of a knife.

Bake at 150 ºC for 60–90 minutes. (Time depends somewhat on the shape of the dish.) The meatloaf is ready once you get 70 ºC core temperature. Towards the end, if you don't get some browning on the top, turn the heat up a little.

Cut up into slices and serve with Bavarian sweet mustard, a salad and Brezen. Bavarian-style potato salad is traditional (no mayonnaise!), but you can actually eat it with other kinds of salad without incurring any truly negative side effects

If you can't get that particular brand, another Bavarian sweet mustard will do, but won't be as nice. Look for Weisswurstsenf, which is a seeded, slightly sweet style that is normally eaten with Münchner Weisswurst (soft pork sausage).

Here is a good video (in German) that shows the entire process, both at a commercial butcher and at home.

You can see the consistency you are shooting for starting at 2:45 and again at 3:10. If you find that the paste during blending gets too thick, you can add a very small amount of iced water, 10 ml at a time. (Be careful with this, the mixture goes from too thick to soupy quite quickly.)

You can also achieve this texture in the leberkase by running the meat through the fine die of the meat grinder twice then beat the crap out of it with the paddle attachment on a stand mixer. Less risk this way of the meat warming to much in the food processor. Both methods work though. Looks good Michi!

Sous vide really shines for steaks. Risk-free, not time critical, and perfect degree of doneness each and every time. Not have to worry about timing is really useful when preparing a meal for a whole bunch of people with other side dishes. If there is a delay somewhere along the line, not a problem, just leave the steak in the bath for another 30 minutes an no-one will be the wiser.

Click to expand...

Thanks, it was quite delicious. I’ve only gotten into SV around September of last year but agree 100% with what you’ve said (I also eat other things than just meat but they’re often not as photogenic and I’d be eating the cold dinner for breakfast if I tried to style/plate everything lol)

Well-Known Member

I can always tell when steak has been cooked sous vide...like boiled beef taste or something. I tried it a few times and I prefer grilling or throwing in the cast iron pan even though it doesn't come out perfectly pink edge to edge. If you have any experience cooking steak it's rare to not nail the temp.

Well-Known Member

I've been working on various iterations of French onion soup recipes, from Anthony Bourdain's Les Halles Cookbook, ( I made this recipe almost 18 years ago in college when I bought the book) and also trying a slight tweak of Thomas Keller's similar recipe that uses beef broth instead of dark chicken broth (in Bourdain's).

Both recipes make amazing soup. I might still tip my hat to Bourdain's since the beef stock (of Keller's) initially results in incredibly sweet tasting soup, but also masks the amazing onion flavor, whereas the Bourdain recipe still preserves the onion flavor and provides balance.

Both recipes really need a minimum of 24 hours of resting in the fridge before evaluating, because the Keller recipe got a hell of a lot better today after a day of rest. The meaty, slightly smoky savory-ness of the bacon blended in with the base onion, and brought the sweetness down quite a bit, made for a far more balanced soup.

Tweaking various arrangements for simple visual appeal. The olive oil and salt croutons really help make the whole thing pop, and also balances out the sweetness. I followed Anthony Bourdain's recommendation for Guyere cheese instead of Keller's Comte or Emmentaler. The saltiness helps balance out the entire dish too.

It's fairly involved, but worth it. I can't find any good recipe in English, so I'm writing this up. This is for a traditional Bavarian meatloaf ("Leberkäse", which literally means "liver cheese", but contains neither liver nor cheese. Go figure…)

You will need a meat grinder, plus a food processor that can take some abuse. (The kind with two or three large curved blades.) It needs to be strong enough to turn a kilogram of meat into a thick and very fine paste.

Meat:

300 g pork shoulder

200 g lean beef

200 g pork belly without rind

100 g pork back fat

Cube the meat into pieces small enough to fit into the grinder. Put the meat into the freezer until it is just starting to freeze. Grind using a fine disk and put back in the fridge, or back into the freezer. We want to keep things as close to freezing point as possible during the entire process (but without actually freezing the meat).

Spices:

2 g pink curing salt #1

18 g salt

2.5 g ground white pepper

0.25 g ground cardamom

0.5 g ground coriander seed

0.25 g ginger powder

0.75 g ground mace

5 g finely grated fresh onion

4 g baking powder or 2 g phosphate

The baking powder is used to make sure that things bind correctly ("Kutterhilfsmittel"). It needs to contain phosphate. (Check on the package.) Alternatively, get some phosphate from a site that sells sausage making supplies and use only 2 g.

"Kuttern" (blending):

200 g finely shaved ice (consistency almost like snow)

I use the food processor to make the shaved ice.

Once you start to blend the meat, you need to move reasonably quickly to avoid things getting too warm. (The friction from the blending generates heat.) Have a fast-reading thermometer at hand and check the temperature occasionally. It must not exceed 12 ºC at any time (ideally, it should never go above 8 ºC or so). If things get too warm, stick the mixture back into the freezer for a few minutes.

Put the meat into the food processor and blend for a minute or so until you have something that's very finely ground. Then add about half the ice and the spices and blend at high speed. The meat will emulsify and start to form a very fine and thick paste that is very sticky and uniform in texture. While blending, gradually add the remainder of the ice. (Remember to check the temperature occasionally.)

Once you have something that's really gooey (like very thick and very sticky mud that stretches like a yeast dough), put the mixture into a greased rectangular baking dish or greased disposable aluminium container. The dish should hold a little over a litre. Avoid getting air bubbles into the mix. (Butchers take a big handful of the stuff and literally slam it into the dish to avoid trapping air.) Smooth the top with wet hands and decorate by making a diamond pattern with the back of a knife.

Bake at 150 ºC for 60–90 minutes. (Time depends somewhat on the shape of the dish.) The meatloaf is ready once you get 70 ºC core temperature. Towards the end, if you don't get some browning on the top, turn the heat up a little.

Cut up into slices and serve with Bavarian sweet mustard, a salad and Brezen. Bavarian-style potato salad is traditional (no mayonnaise!), but you can actually eat it with other kinds of salad without incurring any truly negative side effects

If you can't get that particular brand, another Bavarian sweet mustard will do, but won't be as nice. Look for Weisswurstsenf, which is a seeded, slightly sweet style that is normally eaten with Münchner Weisswurst (soft pork sausage).

Here is a good video (in German) that shows the entire process, both at a commercial butcher and at home.

You can see the consistency you are shooting for starting at 2:45 and again at 3:10. If you find that the paste during blending gets too thick, you can add a very small amount of iced water, 10 ml at a time. (Be careful with this, the mixture goes from too thick to soupy quite quickly.)

Well-Known Member

Well, it can hardly be called cooking but when we were out walking a bit outside of where we live we found a big plot of Allium Ursinum, wild garlic, wood garlic, bear leek or whatever you english speaking people prefer to call it (It's "Ramslök" in Sweden).

It's a wild plant that has a taste somewhere between garlic and spring onion.

So naturally I had to pick way too much of it and bring it home. I mixed most of it up with a little oil and froze it in a flat package, it works great for pesto or in a vinaigrette.

The rest I stuffed in vinegar so in a few weeks I should have some tasty stuff bottled up

Well, it can hardly be called cooking but when we were out walking a bit outside of where we live we found a big plot of Allium Ursinum, wild garlic, wood garlic, bear leek or whatever you english speaking people prefer to call it (It's "Ramslök" in Sweden).

It's a wild plant that has a taste somewhere between garlic and spring onion.

So naturally I had to pick way too much of it and bring it home. I mixed most of it up with a little oil and froze it in a flat package, it works great for pesto or in a vinaigrette.

The rest I stuffed in vinegar so in a few weeks I should have some tasty stuff bottled up

Senior Member

I can always tell when steak has been cooked sous vide...like boiled beef taste or something. I tried it a few times and I prefer grilling or throwing in the cast iron pan even though it doesn't come out perfectly pink edge to edge. If you have any experience cooking steak it's rare to not nail the temp.

Well-Known Member

I can always tell when steak has been cooked sous vide...like boiled beef taste or something. I tried it a few times and I prefer grilling or throwing in the cast iron pan even though it doesn't come out perfectly pink edge to edge. If you have any experience cooking steak it's rare to not nail the temp.

Click to expand...

Interesting assertion. How do the pro sous vide camp respond? I have been considering trying out sous vide meats - it would be interesting to hear a few points of view.

Idiot

I only sous vide if doing more than two steaks, usually, unless they are super thick. If you sear them properly after the sous vide bath, giving them a butter basting with thyme and garlic, I don't taste boiled beef at all. It's very important to get the fat cooked properly as that's where you get a lot of the flavor from.

IMO, “tasting like boiled beef” probably just means it wasn’t seared enough. I mean, the only similarity between slow sous vide and rapid boiling is that there’s not much Maillard happening. I usually only SV thick steaks, where you can still get a good sear without overcooking the middle. The browning will happen more rapidly after SV, since after you blot the surface there’ll be less moisture there than with raw beef. However, I usually double sear, once before SV and once after, turning the steak over every 30 seconds or so during each sear. If you’re worried that you won’t be able to sear enough after the bath without overcooking, e.g. if you’re doing a thin steak SV, cool it off a bit first.